The next day.
On the mountain path outside the demon-extermination village, the Red Fire Crow returned with that sphere of white light, and happened to run into the Yuki-onna, Oikawa, who was coming over.
"Commander."
The Sixth Transformation fire-crow demon landed before Oikawa, folding its crimson wings, and presented the clay jar held in its claws.
"This is the 'dead soul' the Master wanted."
Within the cracks of the clay jar, a faint light could be seen.
About the size of an egg.
Its surface circulated an exceedingly faint yet abnormally pure reiryoku, the fragment of the haku left in the world by the strongest miko centuries ago.
Even though it had been separated from the stone statue for over two months, the reiryoku had not dissipated in the slightest.
Oikawa reached out and took it.
The sensation that met her palm; warm. Gentle.
The exact opposite of the cold she was accustomed to.
Her ice-blue pupils contracted faintly.
Though it was separated by the clay jar, she could still feel it, the reiryoku of that dead soul within was of extremely high purity.
So high that a demon like her, whose very existence was founded on impure energy, could feel an intense, instinctive rejection even from indirect contact.
Even her demonic energy was nearly suppressed to the point where it could not be released.
But she did not linger.
"Thank you for your hard work."
Oikawa nodded to the Red Fire Crow, turned, and rode the wind toward the direction of the Master.
Thus, layer by layer, delegated downward, then layer by layer, handed back up.
In less than a single night, the object arrived in Shinji's hands.
The stalactite cave.
The spiritual light deep within remained as it had been centuries ago, seeping quietly from the stone walls.
Midoriko's stone statue stood at the center, surrounded by the petrified remains of other demons.
Kikyō knelt three paces directly before the statue.
Her white uwagi and crimson hakama were immaculate. Her black hair was bound behind her head with a plain-colored ribbon.
The dark crimson crystal hairpin at her temple glimmered faintly in the spiritual light.
Her palm faced upward, spread before her knees.
The Shikon no Tama rested upon her palm, its white luster flowing steadily.
Shinji stood in the shadows at her side, his gray robe blending into the darkness cast by the cave walls.
He did not approach.
What came next needed to be done by Kikyō, and only she could do it.
Oikawa walked in from the cave entrance, her kimono fluttering faintly in the mountain wind, the opened clay jar held in her hands.
She walked before Kikyō, her ice-blue pupils sweeping the miko's face, then exceedingly carefully set the clay jar containing the dead soul upon the stone slab before Kikyō.
Then she retreated half a step and knelt to the side.
Kikyō nodded.
Her gaze fell upon the pale white sphere within the clay jar.
The Four Souls of the strongest miko of centuries past, Midoriko's haku of the body.
After the soul had scattered, the final thread of obsession left in the mortal world, the force that drove the body to move, the vessel of memory, the fragments of emotion.
With this, everything became possible.
Kikyō lifted the Shikon no Tama from her palm.
The white jewel suspended at her fingertips, reiryoku spreading outward from its surface.
Then her other hand reached toward the dead soul in the clay jar.
The two lights connected between her hands in a thin line.
The Shikon no Tama, dominated by the Naohi, was white.
The dead soul was also white.
But their textures differed.
The jewel was a moving white; warm, circulating, full of spirituality.
The dead soul was a still white; settled, congealed.
Though the haku was the force that drove the body to move, it originated from the soul.
Without the soul, the so-called movement lost its root.
And now, what Kikyō had to do was graft the branch back onto its root.
She slowly brought the two together.
The white lights met in her palm.
The instant they merged, a ring of light rippled across the surface of the Shikon no Tama, spreading from the center outward like ripples, like waves.
Within the jewel, that humanoid outline that had briefly surfaced during the wedding appeared once more.
Exceedingly blurred, a curled female form.
The dead soul touched the Naohi.
Spirit and haku, within the Shikon no Tama, completed their final joining.
White light—erupted!
A resonant hum burst forth.
The entire cave was lit bright as day.
The spiritual patterns upon the stone walls all blazed to life.
The ancient spiritual light that had slumbered for centuries leaped violently as though awakened, spreading from the depths of the cave toward the entrance.
At the same time, cracks appeared upon the surface of the petrified demon remains.
Yet they did not loosen.
Instead, the grudges lingering within the stone statues were pressed even deeper by this light.
Oikawa instinctively retreated two steps, her ice-blue pupils narrowing against the white glare.
But Shinji stood at Kikyō's side, shielding her from the wind and rain, while half-guarding the retreating Yuki-onna.
Kikyō herself was steady as a rock.
She knelt at the very center of the light, her black hair motionless within the flowing radiance, both hands holding the Shikon no Tama firmly before her chest.
The white light lasted for several breaths, then began to contract.
It gathered from all directions toward her palm, smaller and smaller, brighter and brighter.
Finally, it condensed into a single point,
Pop.
A light, froth-like sound echoed.
After that, the white light scattered and faded.
Kikyō's palm was empty.
The Shikon no Tama was no longer there.
To be precise, no longer in her hand.
The jewel floated two shaku before her in midair, rotating slowly.
The blurred humanoid outline upon it was expanding outward.
From within the jewel, from the inside out.
Hair seeped from the jewel's surface.
Pure black.
Hanging to the hips, the ends cut even as a blade, without a single stray strand.
Then, the face.
Four or five years older than Kikyō.
Exquisite and proper.
A bearing so still it was nearly solemn, with a plum blossom mark at the very center of her brow.
Neck.
Collarbones.
Shoulders,
White miko robes materialized upon her body of their own accord, extending downward from the collar, covering the torso.
She was half an inch taller than Kikyō.
The firm, upright curve of her chest pushed the front of the miko robes into a smooth arc.
Her waist was drawn to the absolute extreme.
Below, her hip line was firm and rounded.
Reiryoku flowed soundlessly around the hem of her robes.
The tips of her feet touched the ground.
Midoriko, the miko remnant soul, having fully taken form through the fusion of the Naohi within the Shikon no Tama and the dead soul, opened her eyes.
Brown irises, like a mountain spring reflecting autumn light.
She stood within the cave's spiritual light, Kikyō before her, Midoriko's own stone statue behind her.
The living and the stone statue, facing the same direction.
And then,
The stone statue, formed after the soul had been drawn from the corpse, slowly disappeared.
Or rather, fused.
It merged with the miko remnant form created from the fusion of the statue's dead soul and the Shikon no Tama's residual spirit.
Slowly superimposed.
Finally, becoming one.
Midoriko's body had completely solidified.
As though waking from a hazy dream, this great miko who had lived centuries ago looked down at her own hands.
Her fingertips had sensation.
Her palms had warmth.
The feeling of her feet upon the stone slab, through tabi and wooden sandals, hard and solid.
She clenched her fist slightly.
Then released it.
"...Have I come back to life?"
The girl's voice was clear and bright, like a mountain spring flowing over stone.
Those words drifted.
That voice was crisp and delicate.
The instant Midoriko awakened, the instant spirit, haku, and body fused, the spiritual equilibrium deep within the cave also shattered in that same moment.
The subtle balance that had maintained demonic energy and reiryoku canceling each other out for centuries, at the moment Midoriko's dead soul was taken and then re-injected in complete form into the Shikon no Tama, at the instant the remnant spirit and physical body rejoined, was utterly broken.
Her dead soul and body had once been part of that balance.
But the dead soul had been taken and then poured back, not into the statue, but into the Shikon no Tama.
And afterward, even the statue itself was taken.
It was the equivalent of removing a weight from one side of the scales and placing it in the audience.
Thus, the scales tipped.
The stone walls deep within the cave began to tremble.
The cracks upon the surface of the petrified demon remains widened, this time, not because the spiritual light's suppression had deepened, but because the suppression was weakening.
The grudges were awakening.
The final threads of obsession left by those powerful demons when they died in battle centuries ago, the fury and unwillingness sealed within the stone, like a volcanic mouth pressed beneath a riverbed, finally finding the fissure to erupt.
The seven-headed serpent demon's statue moved.
The gray-white stone shells upon its seven heads shattered simultaneously, revealing dark violet, semi-transparent grudges within, no physical body, only shape, like ghostly shadows condensed from steam.
Then, black mist sprayed from the broken sections of the centipede's petrified remains.
Dark crimson firelight emerged from the tips of the bull-demon's horns.
More sounds of shattering came from every direction in the cave.
Not only the large statues, even the small demon fragments upon the stone walls, attached to scattered grudges, were vibrating.
The entire cave was like a steamer with its lid thrown open.
"—!"
Oikawa rose instantly.
Her ice-blue pupils swept the surging black mist around them.
Her demonic energy released.
Both palms pressed down—
But before her ice could spread, Kikyō had already moved first.
A swift, fluid motion, yet she did not draw her bow.
At this distance, there was clearly no time for arrows.
Kikyō simply released her reiryoku directly from her hands.
The white light she beheld tore through the dark mist.
The first to charge out, the seven-headed serpent's grudge, was split in two from the center.
The grudge shrieked and scattered, falling as black fragments.
But before hitting the ground, it re-condensed.
Reiryoku released through the physical body was ultimately limited, it could not completely annihilate a demon too powerful.
Even a demon purified once would still have much remaining, and would re-gather.
But, this was enough.
Kikyō withdrew her hand.
"It seems... there is still far too much residual demonic energy."
Midoriko's voice came from within the smoke and dust where the white light had scattered.
She stood where she was and did not move.
Her brown irises swept across the grudges surging endlessly from the depths of the cave.
Her expression was calm.
"These are the demons who perished together with me back then, their lingering obsessions sealed in stone for centuries, every trace compressed to the absolute extreme."
"If released—"
She paused.
"They can likely still approach the level of a daiyōkai."
These words were no exaggeration.
The demons Midoriko had perished alongside were not one or two, they were a horde.
Nearly an entire era of powerful demons.
Even if their grudges were only fragments, they remained terrifying.
Each individual was still top-tier beneath a daiyōkai.
At such close range, in such a narrow cavern, it was especially unfavorable for a miko like Kikyō, who excelled at long-range archery.
She had no time to draw her bow.
Her physical body was insufficient to release reiryoku powerful enough for attack, at most, she could manage self-preservation.
But when Midoriko spoke, her tone seemed matter-of-fact.
Matter-of-fact that the remnants of the opponents she had faced in life, centuries after their deaths, were still terrifying beyond measure.
As though the crises she had faced in life were trifling, unworthy of mention.
And she was matter-of-fact and utterly without a sense of crisis.
Because the "person" standing beside her, had not yet drawn his blade.
Shinji stepped out from the shadows and shielded Kikyō behind him.
The hem of his gray robe swayed within the black mist.
His crimson demon eyes swept across the surging horde of grudges.
As stated before, the cave was not large.
Drawing a blade would actually be a hindrance.
Among his six blades, the shortest, Onikiri Muramasa, was still 91 cm long.
In such a narrow space, it was actually inferior to bare hands.
So he raised his right hand.
The Five Elements demonic energy surged simultaneously,
Fire poured from between his five fingers, transforming into dark crimson blood-lines that swept across the seven-headed centipede's remains, snapping them in an instant.
Earth rose from beneath his feet, pinning the seven-headed serpent demon's heads to the stone wall.
Metal transformed into purging, killing energy, bursting from between his fingers, freezing the bull-demon's charge in midair.
Water transformed into poisonous mist, corroding the black grudges that continued to seep from the stone cracks.
Wood,
His hair exploded outward, weaving into a net, sealing every demonic energy channel in the entire cave.
The Five Elements emerged as one.
Operating simultaneously, each fulfilling its role.
In a single breath, the entire cave's situation was overturned by him alone.
The grudges were shredded, stuck, caught, burned.
Though these grudges, gathered together, were indeed close to a daiyōkai, "close to a daiyōkai" was merely an accumulation in magnitude.
No autonomous consciousness.
No unified command.
No Phenomenon "Truth."
Like a pile of sand stacked to the height of a mountain.
It looked tall, but one kick would collapse it.
Especially against someone who truly possessed daiyōkai-level power—Shinji.
And as Shinji's instantaneous results unfolded, Kikyō, standing behind him, also drew her hands free.
She nocked her bow, pulled the string, and loosed a spirit-cleansing arrow.
The demon grudges, stripped of their false shells, had no obstruction left.
In that instant, they were directly purified by the strongest miko of the Warring States era!
The cave returned to silence.
The grudges were entirely suppressed.
The cracks upon the stone walls were sealed by the Earth element.
The residual black mist was absorbed into clumps by the Water element's toxin, then burned away by the Fire element.
The hair-net withdrew.
The golden threads dissipated.
The Five Elements demonic energy receded from his fingertips.
Shinji lowered his hand.
But it was at that very moment, a low, rumbling cry came from the cave entrance.
That was clearly, no longer a grudge.
But a living thing.
A mass of flame poured in from outside the cave entrance, pale yellow, soft and warm demonic fire.
Within the flames, a colossal feline demon beast stepped into the cave.
Roughly the size of a pony.
Two tails raised high behind it.
Each tail burned with the same pale yellow demonic fire.
Cream-yellow fur covered its entire body.
A diamond-shaped black patch adorned its forehead and the tips of its ears.
Crimson slit-pupils blazed in the firelight.
Feet treading flame.
A two-tailed demon cat.
Shinji recognized this cat-demon's identity.
Kirara.
In the original Inuyasha, the partner of the demon slayer Sango.
But in this timeline, Sango had not yet been born.
Kirara's older identity.... was Midoriko's partner in life.
The two-tailed cat-demon who had fought alongside Midoriko centuries ago.
After Midoriko perished together with the demons, Kirara had left this place in grief, sleeping for centuries in the mountains near the demon-extermination village.
Now, it seemed to have sensed the return of Midoriko's dead soul.
Crossing centuries of time, it had stepped back into this cave that sealed memories of old.
Kirara stood at the cave entrance.
Its crimson cat-eyes locked onto Midoriko standing at the cave's center.
Silence.
Midoriko also looked at it.
Within her brown irises, nothing was said.
Then Kirara stepped forward.
Another step.
It walked before Midoriko.
Its great cat head gently rubbed against her palm.
A low, rumbling cry came from deep within its throat.
The demonic fire upon its two tails leaped, warming the air around Midoriko.
Midoriko reached out and stroked the diamond-shaped black patch on Kirara's forehead.
Her fingertips had sensation.
Her palms had warmth.
The fur was soft.
The body heat was scorching.
Alive.
Like her, having crossed centuries, still alive.
But Midoriko's eyes did not grow wet.
Her expression barely changed.
Only the corner of her lips curved into a faint smile.
Everything, from this moment, was truly settled.
The grudges were suppressed.
The cave returned to silence.
Kirara lay at Midoriko's feet.
Midoriko's gaze finally, slowly, shifted from Kirara.
It passed over Kikyō's shoulder, and settled upon Shinji.
Her brown irises met his crimson demon eyes.
Four eyes met.
No words were spoken, yet everything was said.
Within the Shikon no Tama, she had watched this man from the perspective of the Naohi for over a year.
Watched him grow from the leader of twenty-three little demons to the Lord of the East.
Watched him take Kikyō's hand.
Watched him split the sky with a single slash.
Every time the Shikon no Tama's Affection rose.
Every reason the miko's heart stirred.
She had felt it all with perfect clarity.
But at that time, she had no eyes.
No true eyes of her own.
She could only use the tendrils of her soul to perceive the outside world.
And now, she had them.
Midoriko said nothing superfluous.
She merely looked at him.
And smiled.
Fainter than when she had stroked Kirara, yet more genuine.
"At last... I can see you with these eyes of my own, Shinji."
Kikyō watched this scene from the side and shook her head.
Her expression was as usual, not jealous.
Merely somewhat resigned.
Because she had known from the very beginning.
The max-Affection Shikon no Tama's manifested form, named Midoriko, yet in essence the birth of a tsukumogami, had, from the very root, come into being for him.
It had been born to love him.
This was the essence of an artifact-spirit.
Unchangeable.
And, unnecessary to change.